


HUMAN NURTURE

by Elendraug



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dream Bubbles, Enthusiastic Consent, Epilogues-adjacent, First Time, Humanity Kink, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Polyamory, TENDERNESS., Xeno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 16:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21394873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: I will love you at the end of time.
Relationships: Caliborn/Cronus Ampora, Caliborn/Dirk Strider (implied)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	HUMAN NURTURE

**Author's Note:**

> happy 11/11, here's the first part, consider this a taste
> 
> the second part itself is nearly complete and with it will come more fleshed out details, but I wanted to make the deadline for his predomination day
> 
> initially I was going to write a drabble just to try this out as a ship but then I got emotionally invested and it became 12k+, whoops
> 
> I'm choosing not to warn, but I will say that this is unambiguously consensual and they are adults
> 
> thanks as always to my friends for their support ❤️💜

Up on the hill, from out of an unopenable door, someone steps over the threshold and into the dream bubble with a plush backpack strapped over his narrow shoulders.

Cronus watches him from down the steps cut into the soil, as the dream-wind catches the end of his cape while he descends, its fabric slightly mismatched in color where it’s obviously been repaired. His lusus is no longer around to issue a warning as the figure approaches, and when he comes into focus, he wonders if this is the moment that his double death has come for him in the form of the final angel he’ll speak with.

He crosses his left arm over his ribs, his fingertips against his gills through his t-shirt, and braces his right elbow on his left wrist, holding his own face with his right hand. His eyelashes hit his palm when he blinks.

“The clown was hoping to find you.”

To his surprise, the skeletal expression in front of him brightens, grinning genuinely. “He was?”

“Yeah.” Cronus nods and lets his temple lean into his hand. “I’d say Kurloz wouldn’t shut up about it, but.”

“Oh.” His face falls just as quickly, and he scoffs. “Wrong clown.”

Neither the treeline nor the trashcan could hope to provide cover. Cronus curls his fingers into a fist and digs his knuckles into the side of his forehead. He refuses to stop making what passes for eye contact, as he’s facing a pair of _very_ much alive and bright red eyes. 

Cronus digs the toes of his shoes into the dirt. “Are you here to kill me?”

“What? No.” He shoots him a quizzical look. “I’m here to offer you a choice.”

Cronus shifts his weight, back into the heels of his boots. “A choice, or a **Choice**?” 

He fixes him with another look that says he acknowledged the deliberate emphasis. “It may not be a **Choice**, but it’s a choice all the same, and you still get to make it.”

Cronus lowers his hand to rest his knuckles against his lips, not quite nudging where the cigarette hangs out of the left side of his mouth. “Are you going to tell me who you are? Seems like I oughta know that to make an informed decision.”

But with his wide eyes, his richly saturated scales, and the gear affixed to his chest, there’s little left to question, save for one detail.

“I’m not a denizen, I’m an artist.” He offers his hand with three upturned fingers and a thumb that closes a claw carefully over Cronus’ metacarpals when he accepts the shake; it’s then that he knows him to be _Caliborn_ instead of any other title. “I already know who you are.”

After holding his hand for a few seconds too long, Cronus lets go and points towards him instead. “What’s with the backpack?”

“It’s officially licensed.”

“Uh... huh.”

“The real puppet is already in use.” Caliborn smiles. “Besides, he’s better for holding than for holding things.”

After countless sweeps approaching infinity, Cronus is no stranger to stories he doesn’t understand. For the first time in a long while, however, this one has substance. “You, uh. You hold him?”

“It may be more accurate to say that he holds me.” Caliborn is inscrutable. “But I’m not here to discuss that right now.”

“What _are_ you here to discuss?” There’s no quelling his curiosity now that it’s been piqued. “You still haven’t told me.”

“I’m here to discuss holding _you_.”

Cronus laughs, his thumbs hooked into his pockets, his fingertips resting on his thighs. “No shit?”

“I know this is going to sound pushy,” Caliborn begins, with a glance downward to Cronus’ hands, “but this is your last chance to get some.”

“Some of what?” It’s cagey, guarded; too many times he’s taken innocuous statements for innuendo.

“In all the time you’ve been here, no one has touched you.” Caliborn raises a hand before there can be any denial. “There’s no point in being defensive about it.”

Cronus huffs. “Maybe it’d be better if you’d come to kill me, instead of insult me. Then I wouldn’t have to suffer through this indignity.” 

Caliborn spreads his arms and gestures widely to their surroundings. “There’s no one left in this bubble, so I don’t know who the fuck you’re trying to hide the facts from.”

_Myself_ is the obvious answer, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to.

“So you’re sexually propositioning me.” He digs his fingertips into the denim. “Just to clarify.”

“Yes.”

He blinks blank eyes. “Why?”

“In general, I think you should get a chance, like I did.” Caliborn meets his gaze as if there’s nothing that would prevent it. “And specifically, I think you’re the only guy in the multiverse who will understand, and not judge me.”

Cronus shakes his head. “Understand what, exactly?”

Caliborn flicks out his tongue for a fleeting instant, to taste the dreamscape. “Wanting to know what it’s like to be human.”

Something seizes in his chest, and he drops his gaze to the scuffed leather of his boots, to the dusting of dirt that’s settled onto both. There’s a moment that passes, as much as any moment can be said to pass in this place, and when he’s done waiting, he looks back up.

“I’ve known your name, before now.” His thinkpan provides the lore as if retrieved from a shelf that hasn’t seen use in sweeps, cordoned off so he couldn’t dwell on it. “Wasn’t I supposed to defeat you?”

“Some people saw it that way.” Caliborn is shorter than him, slighter, and the appended dark pink cloth of his cape nearly touches the turf behind his heels. “But I’ve heard that you said you didn't want to be violent anymore.”

“It was something like that.” Cronus takes in the glint of the nowhere sun on Caliborn’s prosthesis, and his hands feel naked and wanting for the weight of metal. “But everyone got sick of my soul-searching, too, once they had another soul to search for out there.”

Caliborn’s eyes narrow, and Cronus can’t discern which section of the sentence set off the change in expression. 

“They won’t like what they find.”

That twist tightens again, and his clawtips find the tiny intersections of warp and weft. “I didn’t, either.”

Caliborn takes a breath through his flat nostrils, and lets it back out between his teeth. “We write our own fate.”

“Poetic.” There would be sweat in his palms if he would allow it to form. He doesn’t mask the exhaustion in his eyelids.

“Literally.” 

Caliborn steps forward to close the distance between them and reaches for his left hand, the one he had not shaken. If there’s impact to be imparted through the reintroduction of scales against skin, Cronus accepts it, and focuses on the tension of his toes within his boots, of the scant difference in temperature between them. Caliborn is warmer, but barely.

Cronus looks at their hands as Caliborn holds one of his in both of his, green against grey, with a disparity in their digits. “No one wants to read what I write.”

“Doesn’t matter. Write it anyway.” His thumb brushes over his knuckles with a level of tenderness no one has previously bothered to deign to offer him. “Write it for yourself.”

Cronus keeps his right hand lax at his side, afraid to lift it, of what any wanting motion would imply. “And that’s enough?”

“It can be.”

Cronus worries the cigarette between his lips, tilting it with his teeth as the fulcrum, to allow for his oral fixation to distract from the sincerity aimed in his direction. “How do you know about humans?”

“I know what there is to know.” Caliborn supports his wrist with one hand, and uses the other to run his claws feather-light over the back of Cronus’ hand.

“That’s not what I asked.” 

“I’m in love with one.” Caliborn watches Cronus watching their hands. “And I’ve had sex with several.”

Cronus swallows as a reflex, despite a lack of saliva. “You’ve had sex with humans. Plural.”

“Yes.” He brings his claws down around the side of his hand, still stroking his skin. “Sometimes at the same time.”

“You...” Cronus grips the seam of his jeans as it runs down the outer edge of his thigh, the fabric providing something of a foothold, so to speak. “Really?”

“You have a history with people lying to you,” Caliborn says, and it’s not a question. He finishes mapping the lines of his palm from the underside, and follows further to his phalanges, to trace over calluses on his fingertips first from a wand and then from guitar strings. “And after that you’re not wrong to be skeptical, but I assure you, I’m not bullshitting you on this one.”

“If you know so much, then tell me why I could talk to angels.” Cronus throws all of his tension into his right hand, maintaining the temperance in his left. “Everyone thought I was crazy.”

“You’re willing to listen to what snakes have to say.” Caliborn lets his own left hand fall and takes Cronus’ fingertips one at a time between his right thumb and forefinger, each with a delicate motion, as if smoothing out and shaping the bristles of a paintbrush. “And not just when it’s convenient.”

His teeth leave small, sharp marks in the filter when his jaw clenches, but he stops himself before he can puncture anything any further. If he still had bile, it’d be in the back of his throat. Cronus swallows back the infinite fear he’s kept internalized, roiling in his guts for the entirety of his afterlife except for the sick moments it crawls up and boils over and manifests in words to which he wishes he wouldn’t give voice. “Is magic real?”

“Is any of this?” Caliborn meets his eyes again, arresting, sublime. “Are you?”

“Take me with you.” At last Cronus grasps his hand in return, in a desperate rush to cling to something constant, choking on everything in him that is waiting for the moment to dissipate, all of it smoke and mirrors housing his disdain and his desires. “Wherever you’re going, as long as it’s away from here.”

“You might not want to go where I’m ultimately going, but you definitely don’t have to stay here any longer.” Caliborn squeezes his hand once, securely, before relaxing his fingers and letting Cronus’ grip keep them together. “Do you want me to keep touching you?”

Cronus flexes his right hand against his thigh, and his claws nearly snag on the denim. “Is that honestly an option?”

“It is.”

“I don’t understand why you want me,” Cronus says, looking first at their fingers and then to his face, still searching for answers, “but I want this more than anything.”

“Because I get it.” Caliborn raises Cronus’ hand as he ducks his head and kisses the places where his rings used to rest. “And because you were left here while everyone else ran off to take up arms against their supposed sea of troubles. Even other iterations of you.”

“I didn’t—” He cuts himself off, lifts his right hand to his mouth again, his knuckles knocking against the cigarette. “I didn’t want to stay, but I don’t want to fight anymore, either.”

“You chose your battle, or lack thereof.” When he exhales, it’s warm against sea-dwelling skin. “And some other you is out there right now, doing the opposite thing.”

“I just... I’m just tired of all of it.” His own breath hits his upper lip, bounced back from his hand, as he’s suddenly aware of his decision to use his lungs seriously for the first time in ages. “Of worrying about what other people want from me, instead of what _I_ want from me.”

Caliborn kisses his wrist and speaks against the back of his hand. “What is it you want?”

“I want...” The lump in his throat has latched onto his insides, and he wills himself to shake off the expectations of all the time he’s spent and lost within this static space, and focus instead on having his hand held. “I want to blow this joint once and for all, and see somewhere humans lived.”

“We can do that.” Caliborn stands back upright but maintains contact. “Anything else?”

He’s cognizant of his heartbeat, and feels it in his temples as he hurries to get the sentence out, before he loses his nerve. “And if you’re still offering, I want you to fuck me.”

Caliborn grins and threads their fingers together. “We can do that, too.”

There’s no one around to bid goodbye, so Cronus doesn’t bother; he holds Caliborn’s right hand in his left, and takes a step to stand beside him, waiting for something to happen. He’s waited in death far longer than he’d ever been alive to begin with for a moment like this to present itself, but at least it’s at last already here.

“Where to, chief?” he asks, uncertain of what he’d want the answer to be past his vague request.

“Here.”

Caliborn takes confident strides directly in front of them, to the hive where Karkat ensconced himself what seems like ages ago. He’s on a battlefield now, probably; Cronus puts this thought out of his pan and instead pays close attention as Caliborn bypasses the quadrant-symbol indentations and unlocks the door with a skeleton key that strikes him as more conceptual than genuinely adapting to fit into any particular mechanism.

“You got really good at puzzles, huh?”

“When it comes to puzzles, I think you will find that I am simply the best there is.” Caliborn keeps a tight hold on his hand as he steps over the threshold. “And that’s just one of my many impressive qualities.”

Before Cronus can come up with any sort of retort, he finds himself lifting his free hand reflexively to shield his eyes from the sun’s rays as they reflect off the ocean and shine in through the open windows. Once they’re in the new block, Caliborn reaches behind them to shut the door, and lets go of Cronus’ hand.


End file.
